Past Events › Plenary

La dialectique de Gorgias dans le Parménide de Platon Le procédé développé par Platon dans la deuxième partie du Parménide a suscité étonnement et questions : sa structure aporétique et ses manquements en matière de distinctions et de définitions ne ressemblent pas à la dialectique platonicienne habituelle. Certains critiques ont essayé de comprendre cette étrangeté en renvoyant à une source d’inspiration : en particulier, Luc Brisson explique les aspects archaïques de l’argumentation par le fait que Platon reprenne les Éléates. Ce pourrait être attendu étant donné que Parménide est le principal protagoniste du dialogue et que Platon affirme s’inspirer de la méthode de Zénon pour la « gymnastique » qu’il développe dans la deuxième partie. Mon but est toutefois de révéler une source importante mais que Platon ne mentionne pas, à savoir Gorgias dans son traité Sur le Non-être. Dans ma présentation, je tirerai d’abord parti de parallèles textuels, déjà remarqués par des [...]

«Parménide» et «Hippias Majeur» :  Deux types d’eidos et deux types de participation   Dans la première partie de «Parménide», Parménide demande au jeune Socrate comment les choses reçoivent leur part de l’eidos: de tout l’eidos entier ou d’une partie («Et tout ce qui participe d’une idée, participe-t-il de l’idée entière, ou seulement d’une partie de l’idée?» —131a, tr. Victor Cousin). Deux versions possibles de la participation sont présentées dans le dialogue. L’eidos est entièrement dans chacune des choses multiples et séparés, en restant toutefois le même («l’idée une et identique serait à la fois tout entière en plusieurs choses séparées les unes des autres» Prm. 131b). Socrate offre l’exemple d’une ‘jour’ qui, étant le même, se trouve en même temps dans des endroits divers, mais ne se sépare pas de lui-même («comme le jour, tout en étant un seul et même jour, est en même temps dans beaucoup de lieux [...]

A Long Lost Relative in the Parmenides? Plato’s Family of Hypothetical Methods   Plato’s Parmenides has not received the attention it deserves from a methodological perspective, especially as concerns its systematic use of the language of hypothesis. In this paper I argue that the Parmenides contains a unique but overlooked method for testing first principles, a method I call ‘exploring both sides’. Plato has Parmenides recommend exploring the consequences of both a hypothesis and its contradictory then has him employ the method throughout the second half of the dialogue. It is a genuine dialectical method, but distinct from the so-called ‘method of hypothesis’ of the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic in both structure and aim. In this way I challenge Richard Robinson’s influential dismissal of the Parmenides as being of little methodological importance. Interpreters interested in Plato’s use of ‘hypothesis’ (ὑπόθεσις) have focused on the Meno, Phaedo, and Republic and for [...]

The Argument of Zeno at Parmenides 127e1-8 to which Socrates Responds Introduction My goal in this essay is to understand Zeno’s argument, as reported by Socrates, against the thesis that beings are many (ei polla esti ta onta, Parmenides 127e1-2). Socrates’ summary, which Zeno approves (127e5; 128a1-2; 128b8-9), is this:   If beings are many, then they must be both like and unlike, but that is impossible: for unlikes (ta anomoia) can’t be likes, nor likes (ta homoia) unlikes? . . . If they were many, they would suffer impossibilities (paschoi an ta adunata). (127e1-8)   Three features of the argument create difficulties for interpreters. First, Socrates’ summary does not provide details to fill the gap in the inference from “beings are many” to “they are both like and unlike.” Second, Zeno wants to defend the thesis of Parmenides that everything is one by attacking its opposite. But Parmenides’ thesis [...]

Reference, Being and Participation. Parm. 160b4-163b5 and the Sophist   It has been frequently remarked in the Platonic scholarship that the so-called fifth deduction (D5)[1] of the second part of the Parmenides (160b5-163b6) paves the way for claims and arguments developed in the ontological section of the Sophist[2]. While I believe that there are good reasons to agree with this claim in general, I consider unsatisfactory the attempts made so far to clarify how exactly this preparation is supposed to work. The aim of this paper is to offer a fresh examination of (the main moves of) D5, in order to shed light on its connections with the Sophist. I shall argue that far from providing us with a clear statement of the arguments or the theses spelled out in the Sophist, and in particular of the new qualified meaning of not-being in terms of difference, D5 is meant to [...]

Intra-Socratic Polemics. The Parmenides as part of an anti-megaric programme   During the last years, there was a strengthening of the Platonic studies in dialogue with the Socratic philosophies. The exam of the extant materials can shed light on the controversies with contemporaries that motivated numerous passages of the corpus. The expansion of the analysis on lines such as the Megarics, Cyrenaics, Antisthenes, Aeschines, among others, allows transposing the mere suggestion of allusions and conduct a study of the tension between the Platonic philosophy and that of its fellow disciples. The Parmenides offers a compelling case for this line of research, especially taking into account the nineteenth-century historiography that considered it as part of a "megaric period" of Plato coinciding with his prolonged stay in Megara, and even led to reject works such as the Sophist, the Parmenides and the Statesman as texts directly written by authors of the Megaric [...]

En tant que dans le Parménide L’opérateur qua permet d’indiquer sous quel rapport quelque chose est dit de quelque chose d’autre ; il peut être exprimé par exemple par le datif grec ᾗ ou l’expression française « en tant que » (voir Bäck: 1996). Dans sa somme consacrée aux propriétés logiques de cet opérateur, Allan Bäck commence par les Premiers Analytiques d’Aristote et mentionne à peine Platon. Cette omission s’accorde avec l’interprétation de commentateurs comme Grégory Vlastos qui estiment que le type de rapports introduit par l’opérateur en tant que est tout simplement incompatible avec les Formes platoniciennes : puisque une Forme F est supposée être toujours F et jamais non-F (voir, par exemple, Banquet 211a), on voit mal en effet comment elle pourrait être dite F sous un certain rapport et non-F sous un autre (Vlastos : 1981). Même dans le Sophiste où Platon soutient que les Formes sont stables car elles sont [...]

Prädikationen pros heauto im Parmenides als Aussagen über die Struktur von Ideen Constance Meinwald hat mit ihrer Monographie „Plato’s Parmenides“ (1991) eine neuartige Interpretation des gesamten Dialogs vorlegt, die sich hauptsächlich auf dessen zweiten Teil bezieht. Sie vertritt darin die Auffassung, dass die Konklusionen aller acht Ableitungen im zweiten Dialogteil einander nicht widersprechen, sondern dass mit allen acht Konklusionen von ein und demselben Gegenstand, dem Einen (bzw. der Idee Einheit, to hen), Kompatibles ausgesagt wird. Ihre Argumentation beruht auf der Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Prädikationsarten, Prädikationen in Bezug auf anderes (pros ta alla) und Prädikationen in Bezug auf das Subjekt der Prädikation selbst (pros heauto). Die Unterscheidung sei dazu geeignet, aufzuzeigen, dass die Konklusionen aller acht Ableitungen im zweiten Teil wahre und konsistente Aussagen über denselben Gegenstand enthalten, und sie sollen eine Möglichkeit eröffnen, die Argumente des Dritten Menschen im ersten Teil des Parmenides zu parieren. Der Vortrag geht von Meinwalds [...]

Pseudo-Objects in a World of Seeming (Parmenides 164b5–165e1)   The view that for Plato “being-something-or-other” entails the attribution of being tout court seems to have gained rather widespread acceptance in recent years among authors writing on this topic. This analysis, convincingly presented by Lesley Brown, is confirmed, for instance, by arguments in the Sophist that aim to show that even the predication of not- being entails that the object is a being. Yet it is still an open question whether “being”, predicated absolutely, can be equated with the notion of real existence. One of the main issues, in this respect, relates to the status of unreal objects—a class that includes things such as fictitious objects, illusions, perhaps also things in the past or future. In some contexts, Plato clearly refers to inexistent objects as “things that are not”. But how can we relate, for instance, to the object of an [...]

The Parmenides’ ‘Greatest Difficulty’ and the Origins of Stoic Metaphysics   In the last few decades scholars have progressively shown that Plato’s dialogues strongly contributed to the formulation of fundamental tenets of Stoic philosophy (e.g. F. Ademollo, ‘The Platonic Origins of Stoic Theology’, OSAPh 43 (2012), 217-43; A.G. Long, ed., Plato and the Stoics, Cambridge 2013). In this stream of studies, the influence from certain passages of Plato’s Parmenides has been detected (e.g. P. Scade, ‘Plato and the Stoics on Limits, Parts, and Wholes’, in Long 2013, 80-105). In this paper I will show that a specific passage of the dialogue,  the so-called ‘greatest difficulty’ (133b4-134e8), is likely to have strongly contributed not only to the Stoics’ rejection of forms, but also – and above all – to their doctrine of genera, which represents the core of their metaphysics. This has a specific pay-off, for in this case the Stoics [...]

Nonbeing and the Final Four Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides   How much is the Platonic Parmenides based on the historical thinker himself? While the question is obviously ridden with difficulties, one must nevertheless attempt an answer since Plato presents his philosophy as the true heir to Parmenides’ thought. It is of some interest to inquire into how Plato portrays Parmenides so that the nature of his disagreements with the latter can be more precisely located. This paper is a partial attempt to tackle this issue with respect to the question of nonbeing. Parmenides’ poem prohibits one from thinking nonbeing by the following reasoning. Since thinking is always thinking something, and something is something that is, then nonbeing cannot be thought (DK 28B3, B6, B7). By contrast, the Platonic Parmenides outlines a program of mental gymnastics or dialectical exercise (Parm. 135c8-9), which proceeds by first positing the being of a chosen [...]